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Gaetano Scarano Dipartimento Infocom, Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Roma, Italy Email: [email protected] Received 2 September 2003; Revised 20 February 2004 This work addresses the problem of blind image deblurring, that is, of recovering an original image observed through one or more unknown linear channels and corrupted by additive noise. We resort to an iterative algorithm, belonging to the class of Bussgang algorithms, based on alternating a linear and a nonlinear image estimation stage. In detail, we investigate the design of a novel nonlinear processing acting on the Radon transform of the image edges. This choice is motivated by the fact that the Radon transform of the image edges well describes the structural image features and the eﬀect of blur, thus simplifying the nonlinearity design. The eﬀect of the nonlinear processing is to thin the blurred image edges and to drive the overall blind restoration algorithm to a sharp, focused image. The performance of the algorithm is assessed by experimental results pertaining to restoration of blurred natural images. Keywords and phrases: blind image restoration, Bussgang deconvolution, nonlinear processing, Radon transform.

1.

INTRODUCTION

Image deblurring has been widely studied in literature because of its theoretical as well as practical importance in fields such as astronomical imaging [1], remote sensing [2], medical imaging [3], to cite only a few. Its goal consists in recovering the original image from a single or multiple blurred observations. In some application cases, the blur is assumed known, and well-known deconvolution methods, such as Wiener filtering, recursive Kalman filtering, and constrained iterative deconvolution methods, are fruitfully employed for restoration. However, in many practical situations, the blur is partially known [4] or unknown, because an exact knowledge of the mechanism of the image degradation process is not avail-

able. Therefore, the blurring action needs to be characterized on the basis of the available blurred data, and blind image restoration techniques have to be devised for restoration. These techniques aim at the retrieval of the image of interest observed through a nonideal channel whose characteristics are unknown or partially known in the restoration phase. Many blind restoration algorithms have been proposed in the past, and an extended survey can be found in [5, 6]. In some applications, the observation system is able to give multiple observations of the original image. In electron microscopy, for example, many diﬀerently focused versions of the same image are acquired during a single experiment, due to an intrinsic tradeoﬀ between the bandwidth of the imaging system and the contrast of the resulting image. In other applications, such as telesurveillance, multiple observed images can be acquired in order to better counteract,

Blind Image Nonlinear Deblurring in the Edge Domain

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Observation model h0 [m, n]

Restoration stage y0 [m, n]

+

f0 [m, n]

v0 [m, n] x[m, n]

h1 [m, n]

y1 [m, n]

+

ˆ x[m, n]

+

f1 [m, n]

v1 [m, n] .. .

. ..

hM −1 [m, n]

+

.. .

.. .

yM −1 [m, n]

fM −1 [m, n]

vM −1 [m, n]

Figure 1: Blurred image generation model and restoration stage.

in the restoration phase, possible degradation due to motion, defocus, or noise. In remote sensing applications, by employing sensor diversity, diﬀerent versions of the same scene can be acquired at diﬀerent times through the atmosphere that can be modeled as a time-variant channel. Diﬀerent approaches have been proposed in the recent past to face the image deblurring problem. In [7], it is shown that, under some mild assumptions, both the filters and the image can be exactly determined from noise-free observations as well as stably estimated from noisy observations. Both in [7, 8], the channel estimation phase precedes the restoration phase. Once the channel has been estimated, image restoration is performed by subspace-based and likelihood-based algorithms [7], or by a bank of finite impulse response (FIR) filters optimized with respect to a deterministic criterion [8]. Diﬀerent approaches resort to suitable image representation domains. To cite a few, in [9], a wavelet-based edge preserving regularization algorithm is presented, while in [10], the image restoration is accomplished using simulated annealing on a suitably restricted wavelet space. In [11], the authors make use of the Fourier phase for image restoration [12] applying appropriate constraints in the Radon domain. In [13, 14], the authors resort to an iterative algorithm, belonging to the class of Bussgang algorithms, based on alternating a linear and a nonlinear image estimation stage. The nonlinear estimation phase plays a key role in the overall algorithm since it attracts the estimate towards a final restored image possessing some desired structural or statistical characteristics. The design of the nonlinear processing stage is aimed at superimposing the desired characteristics on the restored image. While for class of images with known probabilistic description, such as text images, the nonlinearity design can be conducted on the basis of a Bayesian criterion, for natural images, the image characterization and hence the nonlinearity design is much more diﬃcult. In [14], the authors design the nonlinear processing in a transformed domain that allows a compact representation of the image edges—the edge domain.

In this paper, we investigate the design of the nonlinear processing stage using the Radon Transform (RT) [15] of the image edges. This choice is motivated by the fact that the RT of the image edges well describes the structural image features and the eﬀect of blur, thus simplifying the nonlinearity design. The herein discussed approach shares some common points with [16] since it exploits a compact multiscale representation of natural images. The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 2, the observation model is described. Following the recent literature, a multichannel approach is pursued. Section 3 recalls the basic outline of the Bussgang algorithm, which is described in detail in the appendix. Section 4 is devoted to the description of the image edge extraction as well as to the discussion of the nonlinearity design in the edge domain. Section 5 presents the results of the blind restoration algorithm and Section 6 concludes the paper. 2.

THE OBSERVATION MODEL

The single-input multiple-output (SIMO) observation model of images is represented by M linear observation filters in presence of additive noise. This model, depicted in Figure 1, is given by

the cross-correlation between the observations yi [m, n], i = 0, . . . , M − 1, and the nonlinear estimate of the original image x˜(k) [m, n]. A description of the algorithm is reported in the appendix. 4.

The basic structure of one step of the iterative Bussgang algorithm for blind channel equalization [17, 18, 19], or blind image restoration [14, 20], consists of a linear filtering of the measurements, followed by a nonlinear processing of the filter output, and concluded by updating the filter coeﬃcients using both the measurements and the output of the nonlinear processor. The scheme of the iterative multichannel Bussgang blind deconvolution algorithm, as presented in [14], is depicted in Figure 2. The linear restoration stage is accomplished using a bank of FIR restoration filters fi(k) [m, n], i = 0, . . . , M − 1, with finite support of size (2P +1) × (2P +1), namely, xˆ (k) [m, n] = =

M −1 i=0 M −1

yi ∗ fi(k) [m, n] P

(k)

BUSSGANG NONLINEARITY DESIGN IN THE EDGE DOMAIN USING THE RADON TRANSFORM

The quality of the restored image obtained by means of the Bussgang algorithm strictly depends on how the adopted nonlinear processing is able to restore specific characteristics or properties of the original image. If the unknown image is well characterized using a probabilistic description, as for text images, the nonlinearity η(·) can be designed on the basis of a Bayesian criterion, as the “best” estimate of x[m, n] given xˆ (k) [m, n]. Often, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion is adopted. For natural images, we design the nonlinearity η(·) afˆ ter having represented the linear estimate1 x[m, n] in a transformed domain in which both the blur eﬀect and the original image structural characteristics are easily understood. We consider the decomposition of the linear estimate ˆ x[m, n] by means of a filter pair composed of the lowpass filter ψ (0) [m, n] and a bandpass filter ψ (1) [m, n] (see Figure 3) whose impulse responses are 2

1 To simplify the notation, in the following, we will drop the superscript (k) referring to the kth iteration of the deconvolution algorithm.

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Nonlinearity η(·) (k) xˆ 0 [m, n]

ψ (0) [m, n]

φ(0) [m, n]

xˆ (k) [m, n]

+ ψ (1) [m, n]

(k) xˆ 1 [m, n]

Locally tuned edge thinning

(k) x˜1 [m, n]

x˜(k) [m, n]

φ(1) [m, n]

Figure 3: Multichannel nonlinear estimator η(·).

discrete polar pixel coordinates. These filters belong to the class of the circular harmonic functions (CHFs), whose detailed analysis can be found in [21, 22], and possess the interesting characteristic of being invertible by a suitable filter pair φ(0) [m, n], φ(1) [m, n]. For the values of the form factors σ0 and σ1 of interest, the corresponding transfer functions can be well approximated as follows:

to prevent amplification of spurious components occurring at those spatial frequencies, where Ψ(0) (e jω1 , e jω2 ) and Ψ(1) (e jω1 , e jω2 ) are small in magnitude. The optimality of these reconstruction filters is discussed in [23]. The zero-order circular harmonic filter ψ (0) [m, n] extracts a lowpass version xˆ 0 [m, n] of the input image; the form factor σ0 is chosen so to retain only very low spatial frequencies, so obtaining a lowpass component exhibiting high spatial correlation. The first-order circular harmonic filter ψ (1) [m, n] is a bandpass filter, with frequency selectivity set by properly choosing the form factor σ1 . The output of this filter is a complex image xˆ 1 [m, n], which will be referred to in the following as “edge image,” whose magnitude is related to the presence of edges and whose phase is proportional to their orientation.

Coarsely speaking, the edge image xˆ 1 [m, n] is composed of curves, representing edges occurring in x[m, n], whose width is controlled by the form factor σ1 , and of low magnitude values representing the interior of uniform or textured regions occurring in x[m, n]. Strong intensity curves in xˆ 1 [m, n] are well analyzed by the local application of the bidimensional RT. This transform maps a straight line into a point in the transformed domain, and therefore it yields a compact and meaningful representation of the image’s edges. However, since most image’s edges are curves, the analysis must be performed locally by partitioning the image into regions small enough such that in each block, only straight lines may occur. Specifically, after having chosen the region dimensions, the value of the filter parameter σ1 is set such that the width of the observed curve is a small fraction of its length. In more detail, the evaluation of the edge image is performed by the CH filter of order one ψ (1) [m, n] that can be seen as the cascade of a derivative filter followed by a Gaussian smoothing filter. The response to an abrupt edge of the original image is a line in xˆ 1 [m, n]. The line is centered in correspondence to the edge, whose energy is concentrated in an interval of ±σ1−1 pixels and that slowly decays to zero in an interval of ±3σ1−1 pixels. Therefore, by partitioning the image into blocks of 8 × 8 pixels, the choice of σ1 ≈ 1 yields edge structures that are well readable in the partitions of the edge image. Then each region is classified as either a “strong edge” region or as a “weak edge” and “textured” region. The proposed enhancement procedures for the diﬀerent kinds of regions are described in detail in Section 4.2. It is worth pointing out that our approach shares the local RT as common tool with a family of recently proposed image transforms—the curvelet transforms [16, 24, 25]— that represent a significant alternative to wavelet representation of natural images. In fact, the curvelet transform yields a sparse representation of both smooth image and edges, either straight or curved. 4.1.

Local Radon transform of the edge image: original image and blur characterization

The edge image is a sparse complex image built by a background of zero or low magnitude areas, in which the objects appearing in the original image domain are sketched by their edges.

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EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing

We discuss here this representation in more detail. For a continuous image ξ(t1 , t2 ), the RT [15] is defined as def

(7) that represents the summation of ξ(t1 , t2 ) along a ray at distance s and angle β. It is well known [15] that it can be inverted by

ξ t1 , t2 =

1 4π 2

π ∞ 0

ξ

−∞

ξ

Pβ ( jσ)e jσ(σ cos βt1 +σ sin βt2 ) |σ |dσdβ, (8)

ξ

where Pβ ( jσ) = F { pβ (s)} is the Fourier transform of the RT. Note that F {·} represents the Fourier transform. Some details about the discrete implementation of the RT follows. If the image ξ(t1 , t2 ) is frequency limited in a circle of diameter DΩ , it can be reconstructed by the samples of its RT taken at spatial sampling interval ∆s ≤ 2π/DΩ , ξ

Moreover, if the original image is approximately limited in the spatial domain, that is, it vanishes out of a circle of diamξ eter Dt , the sequence pβ [n] has finite length N = 1 + Dt /∆s. In a similar way, the RT can be sampled with respect to the angular parameter β considering M diﬀerent angles m∆β, m = 0, . . . , M − 1, with sampling interval ∆β, namely, ξ

ξ

pβm [n] = pβm (s)|s=n·∆s, βm =m·∆β .

(10)

The angular interval ∆β can be chosen so as to assure that ξ ξ the distance between points pβ [n] and pβ+∆β [n] lying on adjacent diameters remains less than or equal to the chosen spatial sampling interval ∆s, that is, D ∆β · t ≤ ∆s. 2

(11)

The above condition is satisfied when M ≥ (π/2) · N 1.57 · N. As long as the edge image is concerned, each region is here modeled as obtained by ideal sampling of an original image x1 (t1 , t2 ), approximately spatially bounded by a circle of diameter Dt , and bandwidth limited in a circle of diameter DΩ . Under the hypothesis that N − 1 ≥ Dt · DΩ /2π, and M ≥ (π/2) · N, the M, N samples pβx1m [n],

m = 0, . . . , M − 1, n = 0, . . . , N − 1,

(12)

of the RT pβx1 (s) allow the reconstruction of the image x1 (t1 , t2 ), and hence of any pixel of the selected region.

In Figure 4, some examples of straight edges and their corresponding discrete RT are shown. We now consider the case of blurred observations. In the edge image, the blur tends to flatten and attenuate the edge peaks, and to smooth the edge contours in directions depending on the blur itself. The eﬀects of blur on the RT of the edge image regions are primarily two. The first eﬀect is that, since the energy of each edge is spread in the spatial domain, the maximum value of the RT is lowered. The second eﬀect is that, since the edge width is typically thickened, it contributes to diﬀerent tomographic projections, enhancing two triangular regions in the RT. This behavior is illustrated by the example in Figure 5, where a motion blur filter is applied to an original edge. Stemming from this compact representation of the blur eﬀect, we will devise an eﬀective nonlinearity aimed at restoring the original edge.

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4.2. Local Radon transform of the edge image: nonlinearity design The design of the nonlinearity will be conducted after having characterized the blur eﬀect at the output of a first-order CHF bank. By choosing the form factor σ0 of the zero-order CH filter ψ (0) small enough, in the passband, the blur transfer function is approximately constant, and thus the blur eﬀect on the lowpass component is negligible. As far as the first-order CH filter’s domain is concerned, the blur causes the edges in the spatial domain to be spread along directions depending on the impulse responses of the blurring filters. After having partitioned the edge image into small regions in order to perform a local RT as detailed in Section 4.1, each region has to be classified either as a strong edge area or a weak edge and textured area. Hence, the nonlinearity has to be adapted to the degree of “edgeness” of each region in which the image has been partitioned. The decision rule between the two areas is binary. Specifically, an area characterized as a “strong edge” region has an RT whose coeﬃcients assume significant values only on a subset of directions βm . Therefore, a region is classified as a “strong edge” ξ area by comparing maxm n (pβm [n])2 with a fixed threshold. If the threshold is exceeded, the area is classified as a strong edge area; otherwise, this implies that either no direction is significant, which corresponds to weak edges, or every direction is equally significant, which corresponds to textured areas. Strong edges For significant image edges, characterized by relevant energy concentrated in one direction, the nonlinearity can exploit the spatial memory related to the edge structure. In this case, as above discussed, we use the RT of the edge image. We consider a limited area of the edge image xˆ 1 [m, n] intersected by an edge, and its RT pβxˆ1m [m, n], with m, n chosen as discussed in Section 4.1. The nonlinearity we present aims at focusing the RT both with respect to m and n, and it is given by

κf

pβx˜1m [n] = pβxˆ1m [n] · g κg βm · fβm (n)

(13)

with

g βm =

maxn pβxˆ1m [n] − minβk ,n pβxˆ1k [n]

maxβk ,n pβxˆ1k [n] − minβk ,n pβxˆ1k [n]

fβm (n) =

pβxˆ1m [n] − minn pβxˆ1m [n]

,

(14)

maxn pβxˆ1m [n] − minn pβxˆ1m [n]

,

(15)

where maxn (pβxˆ1m [n]) and minn (pβxˆ1m [n]) represent the maximum and the minimum value, respectively, of the RT for the direction βm under analysis, and maxβk ,n (pβxˆ1k [n]) and minβk ,n (pβxˆ1k [n]), with k = 0, . . . , M − 1, the global maximum and the global minimum, respectively, in the Radon domain. Therefore, for each point belonging to the direction βm and having index n, the nonlinearity (13) weights the

Figure 6: First row, from left to right: original edge, blurred edge, and restored edge. Second row: corresponding discrete Radon transforms.

RT by two gain functions. Specifically, (14) assumes its maximum value (equal to 1) for the direction βMax , where the global maximum occurs and it decreases for the other directions. In other words, (14) assigns a relative weight equal to 1 to the direction βMax whereas attenuates the other directions. Moreover, for a given direction βm , (15) determines the relative weight of the actual displacement n with respect to the others by assigning a weight equal to 1 to the displacement where the maximum occurs and by attenuating the other locations. The factors κg and κ f in (14) and (15) are defined as κg = κ0 σw2 (k) and κ f = κ1 σw2 (k) , σw2 (k) being the deconvolution noise variance and κ0 and κ1 two constants empirically chosen and set for our experiments equal to 2.5 and 0.5, respectively. The deconvolution noise variance σw2 (k) depends on both the blur and on the observation noise, and it can be ˆ estimated as E{|w(k) [m, n]|2 } ≈ E{|x˜(k) [m, n] − x[m, n]|2 } when the algorithm begins to converge. The deconvolution noise variance gradually decreases at each iteration which guarantees a gradually decreasing action of the nonlinearity as the iterations proceed. The edge enhancement in the Radon domain is then described by the combined action of (14) and (15), since the first estimates the edge direction and the second performs a thinning operation for that direction. To depict the eﬀect of the nonlinearity (13) on the edge domain, in Figure 6, the case of a straight edge is illustrated. The first columns of Figures 7 and 8 show some details extracted from the edge images of blurred versions of the “F16” (Figure 9) and “Cameraman” (Figure 10) images, respectively. For each highlighted block of 8 × 8 pixels, the RT is calculated by considering √ the block as belonging to a circular region of diameter 8 2 (circumscribed circle). The above discussed nonlinearity is then applied. Then the inverse RT is evaluated for the pixels belonging to the central 8 × 8 pixels square. We observe that, although some pixels belong to two circles, namely, the circle related to the considered block

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EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing

Figure 9: F16 image.

Figure 7: First column: details of the F16 blurred image in the edge domain. Second column: corresponding restored details in the edge domain.

Figure 10: Cameraman image.

columns. The edges are clearly enhanced and focused by the processing. Weak edges and textured regions If the image is flat or does not exhibit any directional structure able to drive the nonlinearity, we use a spatially zeromemory nonlinearity, acting pointwise on the edge image. Since the edge image is almost zero in every pixel corresponding to the interior of uniform regions, where small values are likely due to noise, the nonlinearity should attenuate low-magnitude values of xˆ 1 [m, n]. On the other hand, high-magnitude values of xˆ 1 [m, n], possibly due the presence of structures, should be enhanced. A pointwise nonlinearity performing the said operations is given in the following:

Figure 8: First column: details of the Cameraman blurred image in the edge domain. Second column: corresponding restored details in the edge domain.

and the circle related to the closest block, for each pixel, only the inverse RT relative to its own block is considered. The restored details in the edge domain are shown in the second

(16)

The magnitude of (16) is plotted in Figure 11 for diﬀerent values of the parameter α. The low-gain zone near the origin is controlled by the parameter γ; the parameter α controls the enhancement eﬀect on the edges. Both parameters are set empirically. The nonlinearity (16) has been presented in [14], where the analogy of this nonlinearity with the Bayesian estimator of spiky images in Gaussian observation noise is discussed. To sum up, the adopted nonlinearity is locally tuned to the image characteristics. When the presence of an edge is detected, an edge thinning in the local RT of the edge image is performed. This operation, which encompasses a spatial

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2469

1

0.75

|x˜1 | 0.50

0.25

0 0

0.25

0.50 |xˆ 1 |

0.75

1

α = 0.1 dB α = 9 dB α = 20 dB

Figure 11: Nonlinearity given by (16), employed for natural images deblurring and parameterized with respect to the parameter α for γ = 0.5.

size of the local RT transform and the bandpass of the edge extracting filter. After the nonlinear estimate x˜1 [m, n] has been computed, the estimate x˜[m, n] is obtained by reconstructing through the inverse filter bank φ(0) [m, n] and φ(1) [m, n], that is, (see Figure 3)

x˜[m, n] = φ(0) ∗ xˆ 0 [m, n] + φ(1) ∗ x˜1 [m, n].

Figure 13: Daughter image.

memory in the edge enhancement, is performed directly in the RT domain since the image edges are compactly represented in this domain. When an edge structure is not detected, which may happen for example in textured or uniform regions, the adopted nonlinearity reduces to a pointwise edge enhancement. It is worth pointing out that, as diffusely discussed in [16], the compact representation of an edge in the RT domain is related to the tuning between the

(17)

We remark that the nonlinear estimator modifies only the edge image magnitude, leaving the phase restoration to the linear estimation stage, performed by means of the filter bank fi(k+1) [m, n], i = 0, . . . , M − 1. The action of the nonlinearity on a natural image is presented in Figure 12, where along with the original image, the linear estimation xˆ (1) [m, n], and the nonlinear estimation x˜(1) [m, n] obtained after the first iteration are shown. 5.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In Figures 9, 10, and 13, some of the images we have used for our experimentations are reported. The images are blurred

In Figure 14, some details belonging to the original image shown in Figure 9 are depicted. The corresponding blurred observations, aﬀected by additive white Gaussian noise at SNR = 20 dB, obtained using the aforementioned blurring filters, are also shown along with the deblurred images. In Figure 15, the same images are reported for blurred images aﬀected by additive white Gaussian noise at SNR = 40 dB. In Figure 16, the MSE, defined as def

MSE =

N −1 2 1 ˆ j] , x[i, j] − x[i, 2 N i, j =0

(19)

is plotted versus the iterations number at diﬀerent SNR values for the deblurred image.

Similar results are reported in Figure 17 for the image shown in Figure 10 and the corresponding MSE is shown in Figure 18. Moreover, in Figure 19, along with the restored version of the image depicted in Figure 13 obtained using the proposed method, the corresponding restored images obtained using the method introduced by the authors in [14] are reported. Eventually, in Figure 20, the MSE versus the number of iterations is plotted for both the proposed method and the one presented in [14].

Note that the algorithm converges in few iterations toward a local minimum and then may even diverge. In fact, as well known [17], the global convergence of the Bussgang algorithm cannot be guaranteed. The choice of the desired restoration result can be made by visual inspection of the restored images obtained during the iterations, which is, as also pointed out in [6], typical of blind restoration techniques. It is worth noting that the deblurring algorithm gives images of improved visual quality, thus significantly reducing the distance, in the mean square sense, from the original unblurred image. 6.

CONCLUSION

This work describes an algorithm for blind image restoration that iteratively performs a linear and a nonlinear processing. The nonlinear stage is based on a novel nonlinear processing technique that is based on a compact representation of the image edges by means of a local Radon transform. In order to focus the blurred image edges, and to drive the overall blind restoration algorithm to a sharp, focused image, a suitable nonlinear processing is designed in the Radon transformed domain. The nonlinear processing is spatially variant, depending on the detection of strong edges versus uniform or textured regions. The performance of the algorithm is assessed by a number of experiments showing the overall quality of the restored images. APPENDIX MULTICHANNEL BUSSGANG ALGORITHM The multichannel Bussgang blind deconvolution algorithm outlined in [14] is here briefly summarized.

Figure 20: Daughter image: comparison between the mean square error of the old estimator [14] and of the proposed estimator (“RT Estimator”) versus the iterations number.

With reference to Figure 2, the kth iteration of the blind deconvolution algorithm is constituted by the following steps. (1) Linear estimation step. The deconvolved image xˆ (k) [m, n] is computed from the observations set y0 , . . . , yM −1 by filtering through a previous estimate of the Wiener filter bank fi(k−1) [m, n], i = 0, . . . , M − 1, that is,

xˆ (k) [m, n] =

M −1

fi(k−1) ∗ yi [m, n].

(A.1)

i=0

Since the original image can be retrieved except for an amplitude scale factor, at each iteration, the Wiener filter bank is normalized to yield a unitary energy output. (2) Nonlinear estimation step. According to a suitable stochastic model of the image x[m, n], the nonlinear MMSE estimate x˜(k) [m, n] is computed through the conditional a posteriori expectation:

EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing Stefania Colonnese was born in Rome, Italy. She received the “Laurea” degree in electronic engineering from the Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Italy, in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “Roma Tre” in 1997. In 1993, she joined the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Rome, first as a scholarship holder, and later as an Associate Researcher. During the MPEG4 standardization activity, she was involved in the MPEG-4 N2 core experiment on automatic video segmentation. In 2001, she joined the Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnica dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione (Infocom), Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” as an Assistant Professor. Her research interests lie in the areas of video communications, and image and signal processing. Patrizio Campisi received the “Laurea” degree in electronic engineering (summa cum laude) from the Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Italy, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “Roma Tre,” Italy, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He is an Assistant Professor in the Dipartimento di Elettronica Applicata, Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “Roma Tre,” where he has also been a lecturer for the graduate course “Signal Theory” since 1998. From September 1997 until April 1998, he was a Visiting Research Associate with the Communication Laboratory, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, and from July 2000 until December 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the same laboratory. From October 1999 to October 2001, he held a Postdoctoral position at the Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “Roma Tre.” From March 2003 until June 2003, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill, USA. His research interests lie in the area of digital signal and image processing with applications to multimedia communications. Dr. Campisi has been a member of the Technical Committees of several IEEE conferences. He was the organizer of the special session on “Texture analysis and synthesis” for the IEEE International Symposium on Image and Signal Processing and Analysis 2003 (ISPA 2003). Gianpiero Panci was born in Palestrina, Rome, Italy. He received the“Laurea” degree in telecommunications engineering in 1996 and the Ph.D. in communication and information theory in 2000, both from Universit`a “La Sapienza,” Italy. He worked in the area of signal processing for communication and radar systems, and in 1999, he was involved in the design of the signum coded SAR processor for the shuttle radar topographic mission. He currently holds an Associate Research position at the Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnica dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione (Infocom), Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” where he is also a Lecturer for a graduate course in communications. His current research interests include statistical signal processing, blind identification and equalization, and array processing.

Blind Image Nonlinear Deblurring in the Edge Domain Gaetano Scarano was born in Campobasso, Italy. He received the “Laurea” degree in electronic engineering from Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Italy, in 1982. In 1982, he joined the Istituto di Acustica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy, as Associate Researcher. Since 1988, he has been teaching digital signal processing at Universit`a degli Studi di Perugia, Perugia, Italy, where in 1991 he became Associate Professor of signal theory. In 1992, he joined the Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnica dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione (Infocom), Universit`a degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” first as an Associate Professor of image processing, then as a Professor of signal theory. His research interests lie in the areas of communications, signal and image processing, and estimation and detection theory, and include channel equalization and estimation, texture synthesis, and image restoration. He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters.